Gimme a break, John!

I can make Sunday as apolit­ical as I like, it does­n’t stop my per­sonal opin­ions about the polit­ical dimen­sions of what’s going on here.

I’m actu­ally really, really glad that tonight’s rally explored some of those polit­ical dimen­sions, espe­cially in light of this idiot we call the Prime Min­is­ter saying things like this:

“I have a very simple view that this coun­try should wel­come people from all around the world, and bene­fit from that, provid­ing when they come to this coun­try they become Aus­trali­ans. That’s my simple philo­sophy full stop.”

And what does it mean to be an Aus­tralian? Appar­ently you have to be a Chris­tian or at least cel­eb­rate Christ­mas, because in the same art­icle, it quotes him as saying “Be sens­ible, enjoy the sun, it’s Christ­mas and have a good time”. Oh, and I think you may have for­got­ten that your immig­ra­tion policy on asylum seekers is not exactly wel­com­ing ‘people from around the world’ right now, nor is your rhet­oric on terror laws making people who are here feel welcome.

My god, this man drives me *mad*.

Mean­while, jon­ck­her has made a very inter­est­ing post about why second-gen­er­a­tion Aus­trali­ans might not be embra­cing Aussie cul­ture as it stands… Thought-pro­vok­ing… I’m third-gen­er­a­tion (if you count it from my Dad’s Dad), and until this very moment, I have never con­sidered my pref­er­ence for good wine, gour­met food and lit­er­at­ure as any­thing but intel­lec­tual snob­bery, but you could be right: it could be a cul­tural rejec­tion of ‘the Orstrayan way’. Mind you, my Mum adores Kath and Kim, and she is also third-gen­er­a­tion (which makes me fourth if you count it from her side; I’m sixth-gen if you count it from Dad’s Mum. See – I reckon that’s what makes *me* a clas­sic Aus­tralian; I’m a mon­grel mix.)